


Little Rock

by capitainpistol



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fix-It, Healing Sex, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2020-03-13 10:56:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18939517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/capitainpistol/pseuds/capitainpistol
Summary: Jaime and Cersei directly after escaping the Red Keep in 8X05.





	Little Rock

Blackwater Bay was quiet and there was no current. No moonlight glistening on the surface. No stars in the sky. The skiff rocked silently, moving by inches under the dark grey fog ghosting over the water. Cersei shivered, cradling Jaime awkwardly in her tired muscleless arms. She pulled him up when he slipped, unwilling to let him go even as her strength wavered and her spine ached under the burden of his weight. She couldn’t let him go. Wouldn’t. They made it. They were free. They were out. 

And there was nothing. No one. No one else. In the womb, in the beginning, they were protected and warm. Here, in the end, they were exposed and dying.

Her stomach growled. Cersei squeezed Jaime in a panic, imagining the worst for their baby, but then the pain turned sharp and vanished, returning in waves. Hunger. Stomach biting hunger. Unbidden, she returned to the black cells in the Sept of Baelor, when first she felt it. She had tried to forget the hunger, sleep away the pain, but the Septas never let her settle into dreams. They shook her awake, shoved a ladle of water in her face and demanded she confess, pouring it out when she refused. 

Cersei tongued the dry ribs atop the inside of her mouth.

Soft ripples lapped against the skiff. No voice, but it spoke all the same. _Here we go and there. A little more. Left, right, left. We’ll stay here awhile maybe. We’ll move for an hour or more and then stop for two seconds and go on and stop and go on. Never still. Never sleep. Drink. Don’t. Salt. Worse. Hunger is better. If you hunger, you are alive._

Cersei licked her lips and it was like sand scraping sand. 

Once again, her mind wandered. To the cold. To Winterfell. That first night Lannister and Stark came together. The feast that night. She had watched it all from the dais without touching a morsel, the day spent eating pastries and drinking wine up the Kings Road. 

Northern food was dreadful. Mostly you ate meat you caught yourself. A hunting trip every few days. 

Cersei hated the grim faces smiling hypocritically at her proud red cloaks. They sat apart and mingled between the aisles. The king’s empty high seat between herself and Catelyn Stark.

 _Gold. Jaime wore gold when he faced down the grimmest northern face of all. Ned Stark._ Jaime had waited for it, perhaps for all the years since Stark found him on the steps of the throne room over Aery’s corpse. He never spoke of it, just like she never spoke of Robert’s beatings, but they both knew. 

She watched the two and held her breath, all night it felt like. Cersei waited for it to end. It had to. Her brother and Stark knew what was a stake. All they had to do was wait. Wiat for the night to end. For the hunt to take them all away the next day. She and Jaime had planned their tryst shortly after their arrival, after discovering the broken tower no one used. Everything unraveled from there. 

Yet clearest in her mind was Robert satiating his own hunger. A pint of beer and a pair of tits covered with his spittle. Everyone watching. Laughing. Her embarrassment more fierce than that hunger pangs when she denied the plate set out before her. 

Pig heads and feet. Sheep cutlets. Lamb. Rabbit. Prey for wolves.

All those people were dead just like their kill. The bannermen who hated each other and everyone on that dais with her. Spittle Tits too most like. Her children and the Lord and Lady Stark and their son who captured Jaime in the Whispering Wood and set off their next chain of woes. 

Robert was gone and she would do it again. The Hound was gone, too. No one survived the Mountain. 

Even the little direwolves that wove around their feet that night, licking their ankles. She rid the world of one and the Boltons another. The rest were lost. Worse than dead. Forgotten.

-

Bodies floated by. Dead kraken soldiers and broken scorpion arms pushed against the skiff. Battered open hulls like gigantic splinters began jutting out of the fog, stuck in the ends with heads and arms. The shattered fleet merged together into new beasts like one of Qyburn’s monstrous instruments.

Her heart beat ceaselessly like a war drum, pounding everywhere. Jaime’s was faint against her fingertips. He slipped again and she took him up, not at all like a babe. Her nails ripped out of her fingers.

Cersei listened carefully to his shallow breathing, pressed herself to him to follow the rise and fall of his chest. The bleeding had stopped, but he hadn’t woken at all since they made it to the rockbed and he collapsed readying their escape. Cersei had screamed his name and hauled him onto his back inside the skiff. He couldn’t speak, but he tried. His skin gleamed with blood and sweat. He smiled before he shut his eyes. 

All that was left of House Lannister. 

And there, on a rock close by, lay Euron Greyjoy, her would-be husband. King in his own right and proud kinslayer. An animal in her bed. A dragonkiller. Still just a man. 

Jaime got him, got him good, but he got Jaime too. Tears had welled in her eyes as Jaime coughed and woke and fell unconscious again. Cersei looked at Euron’s corpse. His stupid bloody smile. She stumbled to him with her teeth clenched. She took his sword, stabbing him exactly where Jaime had. The sword went in smooth as a butter knife. Dead Euron moved not at all as she pierced it right through the center of his being. Exactly where her babe was inside of her. She pushed in deep. “It’s Jaime’s.”

Cersei pushed the skiff out and rowed for the first time in her life, so tired and so afraid that she could not stop sobbing. 

Dust and rubble darkened the mountainside above. Farther away in the water, she watched as smoke rose over the walls of King’s Landing. The Red Keep reduced to a heap of broken towers. And over it all loomed a black shadow and that strange guttural dragon scream that strangled the thick air.

 _Gods. Old gods. New gods. Fire gods. Drowned gods. How did they let this happen? I wanted them dead. I prayed and wished and hoped and you’ve never given me what I wanted._

Night came swiftly and cold. Bone tired, Cersei made it to the battered heart of the destroyed fleet. She had to stop rowing and begin pushing, avoiding getting stuck. She could not guess how many hours passed before she cleared the worst of it. 

Her hunger became fierce. Her heart would not stop its thundering. Jaime would not wake. No one else and nothing else. She did not know where she was going. She slipped with Jaime into the triangular nook of the hull, her back against the uncomfortable edge of the seat. She held Jaime and nuzzled against his face.

If they did not die of thirst or hunger or blood loss, if they made it to Pentos, what then? Begging? Whoring? The Lannisters paid their debts, but the Lannister name was reviled from Casterly Rock to Meereen. They had no money to assuage the fear of traitors.

Cersei wore expensive jewelry, but very little and all of it embossed with lions, her equally expensive red velvet dress embroidered with Lannister sigils in gold. The goldenhand she should have cast into the water already, but Jaime cradled it within him and so it rested between them.

They needed clothes. They needed somewhere to sleep. Somewhere to hide. They needed a healer. They needed water. A navigator. They could be rocking back to King’s Landing, she did not know anything about seafaring. She only knew war. She knew you captured your enemies and killed them. No mercy. No heirs. Rhaenys and Aegon's heads in Lannister red. So much blood they said the red cloak had turned black. 

The dragon’s colors. 

“Queen Daenerys will find us,” Cersei said, throat parched. “She will find us and finish us.”

Jaime stirred, hearing her but not seeing her. He raised his arm, ignoring the pain spreading along his side to caress her cheek. Startled, Cersei forced her eyes to pierce the dark. His hoarse long sigh calmed her. He was so close she felt his stale bloody breath on her face when he spoke. 

“ _You_ are the queen. They will never forgive her. If there are any left.”

The people of King’s Landing were fickle and they had always hated her, hated her more than Tywin, Jaime and Tyrion combined. Hated her more than Aerys. Perhaps it was not such a bad exchange. The city for her head.

It never bothered her. It made her proud, in truth, knowing all those people despised her, and it filled her with joy, knowing they were all dead now, burned alive, but alone with Jaime in a rickety skiff in the edge of the world, she sobbed. The city for her pride.

Cersei caressed Jaime’s matted, dirty hair. “Try not to talk.”

“Then you talk.”

“About what?” How terrified she was? What good would that do her?

“Cynthia,” he said when she didn’t speak, her hands trembling on his cheek.

“Cynthia?”

“For a girl.”

Cersei held back more tears. “And if it’s a boy?”

Jaime paused a long deliberate while. “Tyrion,” he said, and a part of him even meant it, but mostly he wanted to make her alert. Make her stop shivering. 

Cersei froze at the name. 

“She’s going to kill him, Cersei." Jaime said quietly. “She’s going to burn him alive.”

Cersei pressed her lips to his feverish head. She didn't care about Tyrion. He could burn or rot or whatever. So long as it never reached Jaime. “ _Shh. Shhhh._ ”

Jaime breathed deep as Cersei ran her fingers through his hair. He lifted his face to hers and they kissed softly, the softest kiss in their long memory. They came apart and found that they could see each other clearly and so glad they were to see that they did not question the source.

They looked on one another and smiled. His swollen fingers touched her lips and her shaking hands closed on fistfuls of his hair. Kisses so tender and sweet that it was like they were children again, experimenting, terrified.

Cersei hugged him close and when he held back tighter than before, finding some of his strength, the tension in her shoulders that had been there since the morn, when she was sure the day would end with her on the Iron Throne, dissolved.

“Is the world spinning or is that a boat?” asked Jaime.

Cersei felt it behind her like the end of a feather on her neck. Her heart stopped beating and sank. Faint light shined on them from high, above a great looming shadow ... but it was not that known dread. There was no soul stopping dragon scream following.

A huge curved wall took over everything, slow and silent, moving smoothly. The starboard of a much bigger ship. 

Rope came down from the fog. 

“Tie it,” called a gruff voice.

Cersei did it before thinking, tying the knot to the hull of the skiff. They were hauled by the ship to a secluded spot even quieter than where they had been.

A man jumped over the ship right in front of her, making the skiff rock violently, making Cersei shutter and hold Jaime close. She recognized the man, but did not know his name. The Red Woman was the important one. Meli _something_. Both fought with Stannis. Then they swore themselves to Jon Snow, who bent the knee to the dragonqueen. 

_He fought against me. Here on Blackwater Bay. I set him on fire and now his queen is doing the same to me and mine._

Cersei swallowed down hard. “Ser…” _Remember, remember, remember._ Her enemies. There had been so many. The smuggler with that stupid name. Some fruit. No. Radish? Turnips? Onions! The smuggler. _The onion smuggler_. Seaworth. “Ser Davos.”

The hacked off fingers confirmed it. 

“Aye,” he said grimly, looking them over before getting on with it.

 _Pity. Pity and contempt in his eyes._ Cersei endured it. It was laughter and hypocrisy she hated most.

Ser Davos untied the rope connecting the skiff to the ship and took the oars (there had been two, Cersei cursed herself), dragging them fast and easy into further darkness. A few minutes later they came ashore on a small island peaked with a rock formation. He carried Jaime and she followed them into the opening mouth of a cave. Davos set her brother down on a cot that had been set up long before. Shelves were carved into the rock wall and adorned with supplies and trinkets. 

Davos lighted a torch. So small was the cave that it was all it needed to illuminate everything within.

“Ancient family seat?” asked Cersei, desperate to speak with someone, anyone, who was not dying in her arms.

Davos’s chuckle was genuine. Cersei had expected him to scowl. 

Nevertheless, he was cold in his courtesy and he barely looked on her. He examined Jaime.

“Good news,” he said. “If he was going to die it probably would have happened already.”

Cersei stared out at the blackness, so thirsty she longed to sink into the water. Forever, maybe. “The bad news?”

“When they don’t find your bodies, it will be hellfire behind you.” Ser Davos returned to the skiff. “There is a buried trunk six paces to the left from Ser Jaime. Some weapons. I doubt you will need them. This place is ways away. Plenty of spare clothes. A little bit of moldy bread. Lots of wine. I’ll return tomorrow night.”

Cersei stopped him with her deep intense gaze. 

“I know,” said Davos. “You think I’m going to leave you here to rot and die, like you deserve.” He paused, thinking, as if convincing himself. “But I’m not.”

“I killed your men. I burned them in their boats.”

“Aye. You _and Tyrion_. And not just my men. My son.” Ser Davos took a step to her and was impressed. At her most dejected, at his mercy, she stared him down. “He rests now with the Lord of Light, taken by the great flames. Now it appears the Lord had His fill and is content to make a mockery of my life. I am helping you because I promised to and because I am stupid enough to think you may make a promise yourself when I return and you see this world is not a shitstain to wipe your arse with just because you couldn’t stop fucking your brother.”

Cersei almost smiled. She found her bite again. “I wouldn't. There's a difference."

Ser Davos shook his head and another chuckle followed. Her hubris was astounding, but he expected no less from a Lannister. “If you think I’m going to leave you here, give me your gold. If you’re right, you won’t need it. I will melt it and keep it. Or I will return it to you.”

Cersei watched him closely. He had been at the pit with the Great Council. And he had a kind face, like Qyburn, but without the dark shine in his eyes. He spoke like a King’s Lander. He _was_ a King’s Lander, her instincts said. And he had help take the city and make it ash. Twice.

Atonement for men. Heroic. Sweet even. 

Bile rose in her throat.

Cersei removed her gold necklaces and ruby rings. She tore off the black diamond buttons of her red velvet dress and the silver buckle her shoes. She handed all of it over to Ser Davos’s hand of shortened fingers. All of it but the necklace with two lion pendants, one hers and the other Myrcellas.

“It was my daughters,” Cersei said coldly when he gestured for it.

Ser Davos nodded, understanding in his eyes. “Hide it. Hide it always.”

He turned to leave.

“It was Tyrion,” she said. “You promised Tyrion. He put you to this."

"Not for your sake."

"I'm certain of it."

"Daenerys captured Jaime and Tyrion let him go to come back here, to you."

Cersei showed nothing of what she felt. Inside she was spent. She removed Jaime’s goldenhand and gave it to Ser Davos. “It isn’t gold, but it will buy time.” 

Davos stuffed his pockets with the last of Queen Cersei Lannister's belongings. She kept her airs, but she was done. Her eyes were puffy from crying and she fidgeted with her hands over her belly. Her suspiciously flat belly. He spared her righteous indignation. "There's cheese too, I think. Gets pretty cold here. Stay close together. Boil some water. Clean him up. Stitch him up. Rest. Both of you."

He pushed the skiff into the water, followed a few feet in and jumped in. 

"Ser Davos, you are from Flea Bottom, are you not?"

"I am, my lady."

Gratitude choked in her throat. She was his queen and he was a traitor. "I await your return."

"Aye. Wait.”

The Onion Knight, one of her sworn enemies, vanished with his promise.

Cersei returned to the mouth of the little rock. That is what it became. Little Rock. If the Casterlys could see them now. The Tarbecks. The Reynes. 

Six paces to Jaimes left, Cersei dug out the trunk. The cheese was greening, but the bread was good. Hard, but edible. She bit into, uncaring of her teeth she was so hungry. Tasteless and stale, but easy to wash down with the wine. She grabbed an empty pewter in the trunk and with the torch build a small fire from surrounding kindling to boil water.

Cersei took off her dress and washed herself in the ocean, head swimming from the wine, stomach no longer rumbling but sick with need of better sustenance. She paid it no mind. She was clean. She was alive. She had Jaime. She returned to the mouth and found he was awake, his head turned to her. How long he had watched her, she could not say.

Cersei slipped on one of the long shifts from the trunk. The water in the pewter had simmered clean and saltless by then and she went barefoot gathering what she needed, back and forth, back and forth.

Jaime reached and grabbed her ankle. “Sister… stop.”’

“The wounds could get infected.”

The boar had wounded Robert, but it was the next day that killed him.

Boil water, sew up wounds, row, she had never done any if it. Neither was she a healer or nurse. Gentleness had never suited her. 

Yet she was tender as she fed him little bits of bread and poured wine into his mouth. 

Then she carefully took off Jaime's clothes. Boots first. She pulled them off one by one and nearly cried at the blisters and splinters on his feet, the dead skin falling off from sitting in wet sweat. 

Those scabs and scars and open wounds were nothing compared to the slashes and gashes wracking his entire body. Jaime had to sit up when the last shirt came off. He was deeply ashamed, staring down at his hand and stump.

“How can I protect you like this?” He asked her.

Cersei lifted his chin, dipped a clean piece of cloth into the pewter of boiled water and cleaned the cut under his eye. He winced, not wanting to look at her, to hide his shame, but she kissed him softly, kissed his cheek again and again, drawing from him a relieved groan. Jaime lay back down and Cersei did the same to the rest of him, cleaning him, kissing him, his naked body broken and open, lean muscle over bones, his stump on his side, chest hair gone to grey. 

Cersei cleared his face, slathered the length of his legs, careful over his stomach where Euron had stabbed into him. His neck. He trembled as she passed the dripping red cloth over the coarse pubic hair under his belly and above his groin. 

Jaime was hard and had been since she started on his thighs. 

His eyes followed her as she went on, ignoring his arousal until she couldn’t, when he held her by her arm and caressed her with his thumb, his eyes on fire.

Cersei’s smile was strained with uncertainty. She knew that look. “We can’t.”

Jaime smiled back in a haze, head lolling to the side to look on her. Sure, he could only move his arms and his head, but Cersei in plain garb had always excited him, ever since Eel Alley. He pulled her down just enough, just enough to dare her to do the rest herself. He wouldn’t make her. He couldn’t. Not like before. 

Cersei hesitated. Then she leaned down and opened his mouth with her tongue. 

Wine and blood. Soft and wet and sweet. Cersei moaned and lost herself, mounting him ever so smoothly. She wore no undershift. Her nipples were dark and visible under the fabric. 

Jaime bit down as her weight came down on his groin. He wished to touch her proper, to lift himself and suckle on her breasts. All he could do was look up at her and grab her by the thighs with his one good hand as she guided his cock in between her legs. 

A lifetime of stealing time had not prepared them for this. Patience. Mindfulness. Surrounded by silence. No one to catch them. Cersei so careful she kept him hard inside of her, barely moving, inch by inch. Rocking back and forth as if on a bridge with no handle, the fall threatening to kill him, to take him. Daring to go fast. Daring. Taking the dare.

Jaime’s gashes scraped apart and he bled as he moved with her. It was worth it. Mouth open, cock pulsing, he licked his lips. The only warmth in this new painful world came from her mouth, from her cunt. 

“Don’t stop,” he urged, and every time he said it she went faster. Faster.

Cersei shut her eyes in pleasure, moaned with every deeper thrust of his hips. 

Jaime bled more and willingly, just to take from her those sweet sounds trembling in her throat. He could not endure it. He forced himself to sit up, desperate to hold her, fighting the pain. Succeeding. Blood trickled down his side as he wrapped her in his arms. Down his side and down her bare legs that were wrapped around him. She frowned, concerned, but whatever words she was going to say stuck in her mouth. 

“Don’t stop,” he begged. She grinded her hips down, taking him all in. “Don’t stop.”

Cersei buried her face in his chest. Jaime breathed in the dust and ash in her hair. 

His once faint heart hammered in tandem with hers.

And it was too much, too fast, and too soon. As quickly as she came, Jaime groaned and pulled away, whatever had been numb searing awake. He dropped onto his back, exhausted, darkness taking hold. Cersei slipped out of him, covering him with one of the extra blankets, covering them both. With the last of this strength, Jaime lifted his arm to rest under her head.

“You came back,” she whispered, her nose brushing his. 

“I swore a vow.”

“Now you have nothing.” 

“I have everything,” Jaime said. “Everything.”


End file.
